


i get lost in your routine

by inkandchocolate



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-18
Updated: 2010-05-18
Packaged: 2017-10-09 13:33:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/88030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkandchocolate/pseuds/inkandchocolate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is safety in the familiar and comfort in routine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i get lost in your routine

**Author's Note:**

> Author's Notes: Written for gretazreta as a pinch hit for spn_j2_xmas. I went with your request for "Post-apocalypse - a kind of I am Legend AU perhaps, only there's both Sam AND Dean left."

There's a small box of pictures on the mantle in the living room.Sam put them there. Dean doesn't know where they came from. Some nights he can barely stand to look at them, the faces of people Sam knew, people they both knew and loved and lost.

Some nights he can't stand *not* to look at them. It's a reassurance, bitter and sweet, that once there was someone other than the two of them in the entire world. Sometimes he forgets that. Sometimes it's really hard not to forget that.

\-----

Routine. They were raised on it, and it's not really all that different now. John Winchester was a firm believer in training and living your life according to the rules. Granted, he made most of those rules himself but that's not the point. The point is that Sam and Dean grew up in a way that lends itself to discipline. They know the way of life that's measured by sunrise, sunset, the beat of the rhythm their heart makes when they do a good hard run. The way a gun feels when it's cleaned, oiled and ready to fire. The way a knife looks when it's honed to perfection.

Small things, but they mean the difference between life and death.

It's been three years since they figured out that things were never going to change. Three years of living the same day over and over again, marks on the calendar the only thing that lets them know time has moved on.

\-----

"East side today," Dean tells Sam as he drops a bowl of cereal in front of his brother. The milk is watery, tinted faintly blue, and the cereal is wilting fast. "Recon and supplies."

"Great," Sam grunts and pokes at the cereal with his spoon. "Can we get something that doesn't look like cardboard?"

"You find it, we'll bring it home," Dean says. He's long past the place where he feels insulted when Sam wants to sulk over cheap cornflakes and powdered milk. "I would give my left nut for some Trix. Or Booberry." He sounds wistful as he scoops up soggy cereal and shovels it into his mouth.

Sam sighs. "Yeah, so would I," he admits and grimaces before he starts eating.

Dean watches. Dean always watches. The thought of missing something makes his heart pound in his chest. After Bobby... there's no way he's not watching every single thing Sam does. It's not just loneliness. It's survival.

"Just for that, I'm bringin' home a case of Fruity Pebbles. And you're eatin' half of it." Dean grins when Sam looks up at him. "Hey, you said."

"I said Trix or Booberry. Nobody said anything about Fruity Pebbles." Sam licks at the drop of milk that spills from the corner of his mouth.

Dean watches that, too.

\-----

"Ozzy," Dean shouts from the front steps of the house. "Let's go, dude, time's wastin'. We are burnin' daylight!"

Sam shrugs his pack up higher as the sound of nails on inlaid wood floors comes closer, rough bark sharp and familiar. He sees the way the sight of the dog barreling down the steps makes Dean smile and it lifts his heart. The dog is a gift, something small that Fate offered them, as if to try and bribe them into believing she was not a complete bitch.

As if to say, 'Yeah okay, I killed the entire world, and I let your friend Bobby get taken out in a pretty nasty way. But here… consolation prize. Something you can take care of. Aren't I swell?'

Fate, Sam knows, is not on their side and she is, in fact, a bitch of the highest order. She's just amusing herself. Waiting for the right time to steal whatever matters most. It's enough to make his vision swim, sweaty and panicked at the very thought.

"Who's a good boy? Who's the best boy ever?" Dean is kneeling down, rubbing the dog's fur, pressing his face into Ozzy's neck, talking in that demented way that adults reserve for pets and infants. Ozzy responds with wild tail wagging and slobbery dog-scented kisses on whatever part of Dean he can reach.

"When the love fest is over, I'd like to remind you about that whole burning daylight thing." Sam's voice is patient, amused. Tender.

Both Ozzy and Dean look up at him. Ozzy's tail wags ferociously. If Dean had one, Sam's pretty sure his tail would be wagging as well. Instead Dean smiles at him and stands, cuffs the back of Sam's head gently.

"Killjoy," Dean says, but there's warmth there. Hands and voice and smile as soothing as the sunlight in the sky. "Let's go pillage and plunder."

\-----

The Impala is long gone but the Jeep is an improvement in a lot of ways. There's room to spare when they find a good supply, and today they manage to get hold of enough food to make Sam's belly rumble in appreciation of future meals that don't start with powder. There's bacon, canned soup, a shit-ton of Ramen and ten cans of Spam that actually make Dean's mouth water.

"Fuckin' spam," he says as he looks down at it. "Dad loved this shit. And you, you used to scream whenever he put it on your plate."

"Not tonight," Sam promises. he snatches the box away and prepares to haul it to the Jeep, to pack it with the rest of the things they've picked up, including another radio that looks to be in decent shape. "Tonight I'm gonna be damn thankful for it. Just don't read me the ingredients, ok?"

"Deal." Dean's hand rests on Ozzy's head, the shepherd sitting there beside with eyes bright and watchful. His tail makes a lazy arc on the dirty floor of the ransacked kitchen.

Neither Sam nor Dean mention the pictures, faded and curled, taped to the fridge. Crayon drawings of families that used to be here. A water-spotted photo, blurred over the faces of the parents but painfully clear where the children sit on their laps, laughing over some shared joy.

"Time for a walk," Dean says before Sam can see how hard it still hits him. He lets Ozzy take off, good excuse to run from that kitchen and the memories it holds. They still hurt, even if they aren't his memories. This was someone's life once, and now there is only the three of them around to feel the empty space where it used to be. Dean and Sam and Ozzy, all alone in the fucking world.

Dean's time in Hell was one thing. This is just another level. Dean hopes Sam never figures that out.

\-----

Neither of them remembers when they stopped sleeping in their own rooms. They started off taking a room each, one on the first floor and one on the second. Even when they secured the place, replacing every door with steel versions, covering every window with steel shutters, they still felt the need to keep watch. Guards posted, just in case, the way John Winchester taught his boys - cover your entries, cover your asses.

Eventually, just a little too late in a big way, it became clear that the things that came screaming up from the darkness when the sun disappeared couldn't find them. No scent, no sound, no sight of anything living - they might as well be ghosts. Constant vigilance wore thin and they moved to the second floor, two rooms beside each other. Not many nights after that, they stayed up talking into the small hours, sitting on Dean's bed. When Sam yawned hard enough to make his jaw crack, Dean didn't think twice about making room beside him on the mattress. He may even have patted the pillow.

Routine, and the comfort of a warm body in a world where there may not be any others left, caught them fast. Sleeping beside each other felt like falling back to a time that seemed same in retrospect, a time when all they needed to worry about was who got the last cookie and when Dad was coming home again. Now it's skin and the scent of another human, the incredible feeling of having someone to curl against, to feel him lean into that embrace with a body gone heavy with sleep - it's as close to perfection as either of them ever hoped to find.

\---

Dean drives, Sam rides shotgun - literally. Ozzy leans out one window and then the other in the back, head lifted and ears perked whenever something moves out there in crumbled ruins. Today there's nothing worth stopping for. Eventually though, Dean's sure there will be something. The deer have bred like crazy, some of them mating with the antelope that escaped the zoo. Sooner or later, he's going to bag one and they'll feast on venison.

Tonight it's going to be spam, and whatever veggies there are in the freezer to keep Sam from bitching about vitamins, and maybe even a bottle of Jose from their diminishing stash. Dean smiles as he thinks about it, grins wider when he sees that Sam's caught him.

Whenever he sees Sam's grinning back, something warm and alive blooms in Dean's chest. Life from the ashes of the apocalypse.

\-----

Wash down the car. Wash down the steps. Wash down the door. It's burned into their brains, just like the last sounds they ever heard Bobby make, just like the streaks of blood that were the only things left on the steps the night they were too slow getting in.

It's no wonder they feel a need to reassure themselves the second the door is secure behind them. Hand to shoulder, hip to hip. Nudge, press, lean, breathe. The sound of their exhalation is louder than the tap of Ozzy's nails as he heads for his space, leaving them alone in the hallway.

"Good day," Sam says as he feels Dean's fingers squeeze on his shoulder. He double checks the top deadbolt, restless in that good way, skin tingling in pleasant anticipation.

"Spam makes any day better, that what you're tellin' me, Sammy?" Dean asks, head tilted and eyebrow arched. "Wait, let me write that down."

"Bite me." Sam smirks, pushes him, hand pressed to the center of Dean's chest and lingering there, thump of Dean's heart telegraphed to his fingers.

Dean chuckles and grabs Sam's wrist, tugs him forward, head angled up to catch a kiss. Sometimes it's all rushed and greedy, shoving bodies up against a door, dropping to the worn rug and coming up with brush burns and dog hair stuck to sweaty flesh.

Tonight it's not that kind of need. The sun is setting slow and heated outside, and beneath the city there are wicked dark things stirring. But in this house, in the warmth of the lamplight, there is all the time they could ever want to taste, to feel. So many things have fallen away from the world and with them went any reason to pretend that it was ever going to be different for these two.

No matter how the end came for the rest of humanity, Sam knew in his bones that he would find his own place with Dean and no one else. He knows with that same surety that Dean wouldn't have it any other way. Partners and lovers and friends have come and gone, the world has moved on and left them behind, and in the desolation of that abandon, they have found what was waiting for them all along.

-end-


End file.
